Formula One news

BMW runs double-diffuser for first time

The BMW-Sauber team ran its own version of a 'double-decker' diffuser for the first time in Turkey on Friday. After struggling to perform and qualifying on the ninth row of the grid in Monaco, Robert Kubica saw a marked improvement in position to round off the day in third place.

Improving on his quickest time from the morning by one and a half seconds, Kubica's best of practice two was less than two tenths of a second down on leader Heikki Kovalainen's McLaren. "Today we worked on the setup of the car and tried to understand the two tyre compounds (Hard and Soft) Bridgestone have brought to Istanbul," reported Kubica.

Willy Rampf, BMW head of engineering

"Additionally, this was the first time we have had the double-diffuser on our car. We did a couple of different tests so as to understand how it works and what effects it has on the car's balance; it is too early to say if it works well as the difference between Monaco and Istanbul is too large."

"It looks like this is a step forward," added Willy Rampf, the team's head of engineering. "However, we still have a lot of work to do because it's quite difficult to find the right balance with both tyre specifications. Between the morning and the afternoon sessions we changed the setup of the two cars quite a bit to make the new aero package work. In the afternoon, as usual, we did our race preparation and the pace looked quite promising."

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